Why Mary Of Teck s Marriage Was a 42-Year Silent Hell

You know the photograph. Jubilee, 1935, the balcony at Buckingham Palace, Queen Mary at the King's side — the marriage Britain still calls the standard. She wasn't chosen for him. She was engaged to his older brother, and inherited six weeks after that brother's funeral. For forty-two years the two of them could only say what they felt in writing. They apologized to each other, on paper, for being shy. For thirty-three years she was kept out of the main house at Sandringham. She outlived him by seventeen and decided what could be printed. It starts in that house, January 1892.